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From: gwyn@smoke.BRL.MIL (Doug Gwyn)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: How does 'mv' rename directories?
Message-ID: <11100@smoke.BRL.MIL>
Date: 17 Sep 89 01:37:53 GMT
References: <544@isi.UUCP> <4158@buengc.BU.EDU> <1160@virtech.UUCP> <4195@buengc.BU.EDU>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 9

In article <4195@buengc.BU.EDU> bph@buengc.bu.edu (Blair P. Houghton) writes:
-I've been told that mv(1) may call mv_dir(?) (which doesn't exist
-on this machine... Encore's Umax is a vanilla BSD...) which is
-setuid-root (it is claimed).  If this is how it's done, then the
-reason for the setuid-root could be to allow the moving of a
-directory across partition boundaries when the directory may
-contain files with an owner different from the directory-owner.

No, the setUID-0 is because linking to directories requires privilege.